On October 10, 1931, an estimated four to six hundred people
gathered along Potomac Street in Harpers Ferry to watch the United
Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Sons of Confederate
Veterans (SCV) dedicate a memorial to Heyward Shepherd, a black man
and the first person fatally injured during John Brown's raid on
the town in 1859. On one side of Potomac Street, in a corner
between two buildings, stood a simple, flag-covered granite
boulder, approximately six feet in height, surrounded by green ivy.
On the other side, a speakers' stand, draped in Confederate red and
white bunting, stood along the retaining wall for the railroad
embankment. In addition to members of the UDC and SCV, participants
and honored guests included at least two descendants of Union
soldiers and three black men. The crowd listened to the usual
litany of remarks made on such occasions and watched as a young
girl drew the flag from the boulder and a member of the UDC placed
a wreath upon the stone. Singers from the local black Storer
College provided music.1

The UDC and SCV could be happy with the dedication, especially
since it had taken more than a decade for these two organizations
to secure a location for the Heyward Shepherd Memorial. Despite the
participation of both whites and blacks, and representatives of
North and South, in its dedication, the Heyward Shepherd Memorial
became, as one opponent predicted in 1922, an "ever present bone of
contention."2 The memorial recalls one of the most
divisive periods in this country's history, the middle half of the
nineteenth century, when fundamental differences over what the
country was and what it should be culminated in a civil war that
saved the Union and ended slavery but left many other issues
unresolved. More specifically, the memorial recalls John Brown's
raid, an event Brown biographer Stephen Oates observed "polarized
the country as no other event had done . . . [and] set in motion a
spiral of accusation and counteraccusation between North and South
that bore the country irreversibly toward Civil War."3
The postwar years brought no consensus on Brown either. On the one
hand, most blacks and some whites saw Brown as a hero because he
opposed slavery not just by word but by deed. On the other hand,
most Southern whites contended that Brown was a criminal whose
actions at Harpers Ferry had forced them or their forebears to
secede from the Union and take up arms against it in defense of
their constitutional rights.4

Disagreement over Brown alone likely would have made the Heyward
Shepherd Memorial controversial, but another message the memorial
conveyed proved equally contentious. In part because of Brown's
opposition to slavery, but also because of the monument's stated
tribute to blacks who remained faithful to the South during the
raid and the war that followed, race became inextricably linked to
the memorial. To the thinking of some opponents, the memorial
reflected this country's long history of racial injustice, visible
first in the form of the enslavement of millions of blacks and
later in the form of legalized segregation, disfranchisement, and
other discriminatory practices. Such proscriptions were bolstered
by an ideology that assumed white superiority and the inability of
blacks ever to share fully in American society. One strain of
thought in the postwar South emphasized the goodwill between slaves
and masters in the antebellum period, the love and loyalty slaves
felt for whites, and the beneficial training blacks had received
while enslaved. Most whites could only envision a postwar society
in which blacks played a fixed, subservient role. Many also
believed that blacks had only degenerated as free men and women, a
view fully supported in some white intellectual circles. Some
concluded that there was no place in American society for blacks at
all. This grim opinion was at the height of its influence during
the 1890s and early 1900s and was vividly displayed in D. W.
Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which premiered in 1915
and became perhaps the most popular silent film ever made. Based on
Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, it portrayed the freed black
under Reconstruction as a combination of child and brute, glorified
the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the white vigilante group that had
terrorized blacks in the South during those years, and offered
lynching as suitable punishment for suspected black
criminals.5

The Heyward Shepherd Memorial presents no such dark view of
blacks, of course. On the contrary, the memorial reflects its
sponsors' fond memories of loyal slaves, in particular those who
did not flee or take up arms against the South during Brown's raid
and the Civil War but remained in faithful service to their
masters. Either out of loyalty or fear, many slaves did not flee
from their masters during those turbulent years, and as one recent
study of blacks in Civil War Virginia contends, a few blacks
willingly assisted the Confederacy. But many blacks of later
generations found such images offensive and harmful to their quest
for equality. In the decades after the Civil War, the emphasis on
the bravery and sacrifice of soldiers on the battlefield helped
promote reconciliation between North and South, but it also
obscured the war's racial dimension. "The war became essentially a
conflict between white men; both sides fought well, Americans
against Americans, and there was glory enough to go around," David
Blight has argued. "The great issues of the conflict-slavery,
secession, emancipation, black equality, even disloyalty and
treason-faded from national consciousness." Some blacks challenged
this national forgetfulness, believing it reflected a growing
American indifference toward both the wave of legal proscriptions
undermining the limited successes blacks had achieved in the South
under Reconstruction and the deteriorating condition of blacks in
the North. They were determined to remember the Civil War in terms
of emancipation and the commitments the country made to blacks
during Reconstruction. They preferred to stress the fact that
blacks had rebelled against slavery, that some slaves had secretly
aided Union troops, and that both fugitive slaves and free blacks
had served in the Union army. Therefore, it is not surprising that
when the UDC and SCV dedicated the Heyward Shepherd Memorial in
1931, admirers of John Brown denounced its negative message about
the man and his mission, and leaders of the struggle for black
rights attacked the implied message that blacks enjoyed being
slaves and did not fight for their own freedom.6

To tell the story of the Heyward Shepherd Memorial, it is
necessary to begin with the night of October 16, 1859, when John
Brown and his followers made their way to Harpers Ferry, then part
of Virginia, from a farm across the Potomac River in Maryland.
Brown, already notorious for his violent acts against pro-slavery
forces in Kansas several years earlier, planned to seize the
federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and, with the anticipated support
of thousands of slaves, wage a war on slavery. Moving quietly into
town late that October night, Brown's men quickly took control of
several strategic positions while most unsuspecting townspeople
slumbered in their beds. Once roused to action, however, townsmen
and local militia easily defeated several groups of raiders, and
Brown, his surviving men, and some thirty hostages took refuge in
the armory fire engine house. Brown was captured there when federal
troops stormed the building on October 18. Thirty-six hours after
it began, John Brown's raid was over.7

Although the raid quickly ended, its impact was far reaching.
Much has been written about the raid's cataclysmic effect on the
country, but relatively little attention has been given to the
raid's singular irony: in their mission to set blacks free, Brown
and his men killed Heyward Shepherd, a free black man. Shepherd's
home was in Winchester, about thirty miles away in Frederick
County, Virginia, where he owned property and where his wife and
children lived. Yet much of Shepherd's time was spent in Harpers
Ferry, where he worked as a porter in the local train station. In
addition to handling baggage, Shepherd attended the railroad office
when the station agent was absent.8 From all accounts,
Shepherd was well regarded by those who knew him. One prominent
county resident noted that Shepherd was "always remarkably civil"
and "very trustworthy." Another man concurred, describing Shepherd
as a "courteous, attentive, honest, . . . and industrious" man who
was "respected by all."9

Heyward Shepherd was at the train station when John Brown and
his men approached Harpers Ferry the night of October 16. Accounts
vary as to the precise details of how and why Shepherd's life
crossed paths with those of the raiders. They agree, however, that
about 1:30 A.M. on the seventeenth, shortly after the Baltimore and
Ohio (B&O) express train arrived from Wheeling, Virginia (now
West Virginia), Shepherd walked to the Potomac River railroad
bridge where he was confronted by two of Brown's men. Ignoring
their order to halt, he turned and ran, but the armed raiders
fired, striking Shepherd in the back just below the heart. Although
seriously injured, Shepherd made his way back to the railroad
office, where he lingered "in great agony" for nearly half a day
before dying early on the afternoon of October 17.10

In the aftermath, some writers did not hesitate to speculate
about or elaborate on Shepherd's role in the raid. Immediately
after the raid, one newspaper reported Shepherd was told of John
Brown's purpose but refused to join the raiders, thus suggesting
his refusal to heed their orders showed his opposition to their
goals. In a different vein, years later, a former resident of
Harpers Ferry suggested Shepherd may have helped the raiders
initially but later changed his mind when the danger and likelihood
of failure became clear.11 Shepherd's deathbed
explanation that he went to the bridge in search of a missing
railroad watchman suggests he was shot by men he did not recognize
and whose purpose he did not know.12

Whether Shepherd knew who his attackers were, whether he
conspired with them before the fact, or whether he was completely
ignorant of their motives is less important than how Shepherd was
perceived by those who kept his name from being forgotten after his
death. When several militia groups and white citizens accompanied
Shepherd's body through Winchester to its burial place in October
1859, they no doubt did so because they wished to honor publicly a
black man they believed had knowingly refused to join Brown's war
on slavery. In reporting on the funeral, the local newspaper in
Shepherd's hometown underscored Shepherd's race when it
specifically reminded readers that Brown's first victim was a black
man.13 After the Civil War, H. N. and William W. B.
Gallaher, father and son editors of the Virginia Free Press,
a weekly newspaper published in Charles Town, a few miles from
Harpers Ferry, similarly recognized Shepherd's symbolic importance.
For decades, the Virginia Free Press challenged favorable
comments on Brown by reminding readers of the men killed at Harpers
Ferry by Brown's raiders. The editors found Shepherd particularly
appealing and periodically pointed out that a black man was the
first casualty of the raid.14

At the same time, the Virginia Free Press's mention of
Brown's first victim sometimes seemed to have less to do with Brown
than with issues related to blacks in the postwar South. When
Frederick Douglass delivered an oration on Brown at Harpers Ferry
in 1881, the Virginia Free Press editors stated they would
not let the "negro-worshippers" forget that "the first victim of
the old murderer was an inoffensive, industrious and respected
colored man, brutally shot down without provocation or
excuse."15 In 1884, when blacks voted "almost to a man"
for the Republican party, William Gallaher, now sole editor of the
Virginia Free Press, gave notice that he would not let
blacks forget who Brown's first victim was.16 More
overtly, in a rare departure from his typical use of Shepherd to
denounce Brown and his admirers, Gallaher raised Shepherd's name
during an exchange in 1902 with the editor of the Pioneer
Press, a black newspaper published in Martinsburg, about Jim
Crow railroad cars in the South. Gallaher suggested Shepherd, like
other "respectable colored people," would have made such
accommodations unnecessary because he never would have "obtruded
himself" on the white passengers.17 Thus, Shepherd
emerged not just as Brown's first victim but also as a hard-working
black man who would not threaten prevailing social customs.

Still, Shepherd was always most important to the Virginia
Free Press editor as a symbol of the error of Brown's mission.
Interestingly, it may have been William Gallaher who first raised
the idea of memorializing Shepherd. In 1894, in response to news
that blacks led by Frederick Douglass and several other prominent
men planned to erect a monument in Harpers Ferry to John Brown,
Gallaher suggested white people erect a monument there to Heyward
Shepherd. While discussions about a monument to Brown continued,
and an obelisk was erected in 1895 to mark the location of the
armory fire engine house in which Brown made his last stand, the
suggestion of a monument to Shepherd seems to have been nothing
more than part of the editor's routine challenge to pro-Brown
activities. It was from another direction that creation of a
memorial to Shepherd emerged, one that shared Gallaher's desire to
shape opinion on John Brown but also sought to pay tribute to
faithful slaves.18

Following the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, most white
Southerners accepted the demise of slavery and their dreams of an
independent nation, but that acceptance did not mean an
enthusiastic return to the Union. On the contrary, some Southerners
were openly hostile to the North, and many vigorously defended the
justness of secession and slavery while proclaiming their loyalty
to the federal government. This viewpoint emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century as the Lost Cause, a movement that defended and
idealized the Confederacy and the antebellum South and involved
large numbers of Southerners in the public celebration of the
Confederate tradition. The United Confederate Veterans, organized
in 1889, spearheaded the celebration through the 1890s and into the
early twentieth century. Later, the UDC, formed in 1894, and, to a
much lesser extent, the SCV, established in 1896, directed the
Confederate celebration. Through the efforts of these
organizations, the emphasis on honoring fallen warriors in Memorial
Day observances and cemetery monuments, a form of remembrance that
dominated the Confederate tradition in the years immediately
following the war, gave way to activities that celebrated the
Confederacy and afforded opportunities to inform young people of
the heroism and loyalty exhibited by defenders of the Southern
cause. To insure the "true" history of the South and the
Confederacy prevailed, Confederate groups, in particular the UDC,
supported educational programs, preserved Confederate records, and
scrutinized textbooks and other publications for their
interpretation of Southern history. The participation of veterans
and members of the various Confederate organizations in annual
reunions and the dedication of hundreds of monuments and memorials
in courthouse yards, city streets, or other public venues
throughout the South also reinforced the Confederate
tradition.19

The monuments Confederate organizations erected typically
honored soldiers and leaders or marked the sites of particular
battles, but other monuments were considered as well. For example,
around 1900 many UDC chapters began discussing the erection of a
monument to faithful slaves.20 As one UDC member who
favored the idea argued, such a monument would have a positive
influence on present and future generations who could not learn of
the "self-sacrifice and devotion" of slaves in any other way. It
would "refute the slanders and falsehoods" in Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and instead show "the traditions,
romance, poetry, and picturesqueness of the South." Moreover, a
monument to faithful slaves would show future generations white
Southerners were the best friends blacks had during slavery and
that they remained their best friends.21

Not everyone in the UDC shared this opinion. In a bitter letter
to the Confederate Veteran, the official publication of the
various Confederate organizations, one woman reported that every
member of her UDC chapter, save one, rejected the idea. The "old,
faithful mammy and uncle of slave times . . . were fully rewarded
for faithful trust," she asserted, citing a report that only 10
percent of slaves had remained with their masters after
emancipation. Depicting the former slave as a "black fiend" and
contending that the "negro of this generation would not appreciate
any monument not smacking of social equality," she concluded that
interest in a monument to blacks represented "a woefully mistaken
sentiment."22 A majority of women attending the 1907 UDC
convention in Norfolk, Virginia, evidently agreed with this writer.
A resolution calling for creation of a memorial to faithful slaves
was offered, but, as the history of the UDC explained the outcome,
the members were "not ready for the work then and postponed
consideration of it."23

For thirteen years, matters stood thus, until author and
historian Matthew Page Andrews of Baltimore championed the idea of
placing a monument at Harpers Ferry in honor of a "faithful slave"
killed during John Brown's raid. Andrews's roots were deeply
planted in the South. He grew up only a few miles from Harpers
Ferry, near Shepherdstown, and so as a child likely heard the story
of the raid, perhaps told by some of those local whites who had
rushed to Harpers Ferry to quell the suspected slave insurrection.
He received his college training at Washington and Lee University,
which had the reputation as a bastion of the Confederate
celebration, and taught school for several years before applying
his interest in education to writing histories and other
publications.24 Much of Andrews's energies were directed
in support of the Southern view of history. A member of the SCV and
eventually chairman of that organization's textbook committee,
Andrews was "always on the alert for anything . . . detrimental to
the cause for which the Sons" stood and "ever ready to combat false
propaganda" being spread throughout the South in textbooks written
by Northerners.25 Andrews also worked closely with the
UDC, which made him an honorary associate member in 1930 in
recognition of his work in "guarding our Southern
history."26 It apparently was as this guardian of
Southern history that Andrews conceived of the memorial as "an
antidote to the John Brownism of the period."27

At the annual UDC convention at Asheville, North Carolina, in
November 1920, President-General May McKinney recommended the
members follow through on Andrews's suggestion so that "future
generations may be impressed with the real truth" about Brown.
McKinney told convention attendees that at Harpers Ferry Brown
killed "a faithful slave" who "held too dear the lives of 'Ole
Massa' and 'Ole Miss'us', to fulfill Brown's orders of rapine and
murder." She exhorted the UDC to tell "future listeners the story
of this faithful slave, who stood between Southern womanhood and a
renegade adventurer."28 The convention approved the
monument and created a committee chaired by Mary Dowling Bond of
Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, to act with the SCV, which had approved the
memorial a month earlier at the annual reunion of Confederate
veterans' organizations in Houston.29 The UDC and SCV
each agreed to contribute five hundred dollars toward the monument,
the total cost not to exceed one thousand dollars.30

President-General McKinney asked Matthew Page Andrews to write
the inscription for the "Faithful Slave Memorial," as the Heyward
Shepherd Memorial was then known. Andrews originally proposed the
memorial honor both Shepherd, "an industrious and respected negro
man," and James, the hired slave of Colonel Lewis Washington.
Shepherd was killed by Brown's men while James, who was taken
hostage along with Washington, apparently drowned during the raid.
Little of Andrews's original inscription would survive unchanged to
the final version, but this early draft provides insights into the
philosophy behind the memorial. Clearly, Shepherd and James were
less important as individuals than as symbols; the memorial
intended to honor these two "humble, innocent victims of a proposed
servile insurrection" and of all blacks who had refrained from
violence during the raid and the Civil War. Additionally, Andrews
hoped the memorial would inspire people "to prove themselves
worthy" of a past that produced men like George Washington and
Robert E. Lee, as well as the descendants of "once heathen
Africans" whom whites had "faithfully" taught Christian
principles.31

During 1921 Andrews made nearly two dozen revisions to the
inscription, substantially altering and shortening the text. Most
significantly, when Andrews conducted additional research, the
circumstances of James's death came into question. Harpers Ferry
historian Joseph Barry, a resident of the town at the time of the
raid, indicated James drowned while trying to escape from Brown's
raiders. Brown biographer Oswald Garrison Villard noted, however,
that while some people believed James was shot by raider John Cook,
others contended he drowned in an attempt to run away from
townspeople. The later scenario had been believed by the Virginia
Committee of Claims, which turned down the petition for
compensation James's owner had filed after the raid. Following a
visit to Harpers Ferry with Faithful Slave Memorial Committee
members Colonel Braxton Gibson and Miss Orra Tomlinson of Charles
Town, Andrews deleted reference to James in the
inscription.32

The Faithful Slave Memorial Committee originally hoped to
dedicate the memorial in October but settled on September 9, 1921,
after it became clear neither UDC president-general McKinney nor
SCV commander-in-chief Nathan Bedford Forrest could attend on any
day in October.33 The dedication plans were quickly
canceled, however, because the committee found itself confronted
with an unforeseen obstacle to the completion of its appointed
task, its inability to find a home for the Faithful Slave Memorial
in Harpers Ferry. Because Heyward Shepherd had worked for the
railroad and had been shot while on duty, the UDC and SCV wished to
erect the boulder on railroad property as near as possible to the
site where he was shot. The committee sent a letter to Daniel
Willard, president of the B&O Railroad, seeking permission to
place the boulder on "a vacant triangular lot at the intersections
of streets opposite the B. & O. Railroad Station" and
"surrounded by a drive that is in front of the
station."34 Significantly, the spot to which that
description most likely refers was across the train station
driveway from the John Brown Fort obelisk erected in 1895.
Placement in that location would have made the Confederate memorial
a visible counterpoint to the monument marking the original
location of the armory fire engine house made famous by
Brown.35

Before granting permission, the B&O decided to determine the
sentiment at Harpers Ferry. Late in May 1922 an assistant to
President Willard discussed the matter with Henry McDonald, town
recorder for Harpers Ferry. McDonald was also the white president
of Storer College, a now-defunct black school established by the
Freewill Baptists in 1867 as an extension of their work among freed
blacks and, in part, located in Harpers Ferry because it was the
site where Brown had struck a blow against slavery. McDonald
understood the importance of Brown's memory to the college; he
lectured on the man, largely as a fund-raising measure, and in
1909, during his presidency, Storer College purchased the armory
fire engine house and moved it to the college campus.36
McDonald also saw the connection between Brown's memory and race
relations. By his own account, when the town council considered the
memorial to Heyward Shepherd at its June 1, 1922 meeting, McDonald
"saw to it that the offer was rejected."37 The following
day, in his capacity as town recorder, McDonald wrote Willard of
the council opposition and noted the monument as proposed was
"likely to occassion [sic] unpleasant racial feeling in a community
where we are so entirely free from it."38 McDonald had
just learned Shepherd was a free man, and he saw the memorial as an
attempt on the part of the UDC and SCV to "belittle John Brown and
his men to magnify the Confederacy through the subtle tribute to
one they supposed was a slave."39

When the railroad company informed the memorial committee of the
town council's objection, the committee apparently took it to mean
opposition primarily from McDonald. Committee members informed the
UDC that McDonald was a Northerner and the head of Storer College,
and they decried the mention of race as a "partisan appeal." The
committee took no action over the next few months, as members hoped
the municipal election the following January would bring favorable
political change to Harpers Ferry. Unfortunately for the UDC and
SCV, the 1923 election merely brought a "rotation in office"
whereby McDonald became mayor.40

At the New Orleans Reunion in April 1923, the president of the
Virginia Division UDC volunteered to seek a place for the memorial
on Capitol Square in Richmond if the memorial committee
wished.41 As Mary Dowling Bond noted, if placed there,
the Faithful Slave Memorial would sit near monuments to George
Washington and Robert E. Lee and "other excellent citizens and
heroes who knew and appreciated the Southern negro and often tested
the faithfulness of such men as Heyward Shepherd and the dear
'Black Mammy'."42 Soon thereafter, Colonel Gibson
reported the Harpers Ferry town council wanted the memorial if the
committee changed one sentence of the inscription from "The negroes
of this neighborhood, true to their Christian training, would have
no part with those who offered PIKES and STAVES for BLOODY
MASSACRE" to "The negroes of this neighborhood, true to their
Christian training, would have no part in the TERRIBLE RAID." The
committee asked the convention for a decision on whether to pursue
a location in Richmond or attempt to reach an agreement with the
Harpers Ferry town council. The UDC favored trying to find a home
for the memorial at Harpers Ferry.43

Members of the memorial committee completely misunderstood the
UDC's wishes, however, and so spent several months seeking a spot
on Capitol Square before they learned that the convention had
actually directed them to pursue the Harpers Ferry location. By
that time, it was mid-1924 and the country was gearing up for a
national election that would reveal deep divisions over the KKK,
which had been reborn in 1915 amidst the success of The Birth of
a Nation. With its anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic,
and anti-Catholic agenda, the new KKK claimed over two million
members by 1924. Having already shown its influence in state and
local elections, the KKK was ready to make its presence felt in
national politics as well. But the KKK also had many opponents. At
the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution condemning
the KKK by name was narrowly defeated, but the acrimonious debate
left the convention so divided that it took 103 ballots to select a
compromise presidential nominee. In a climate in which "a very
sinister influence was at work spreading race-hatred and
religious-fanaticism," the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee did
not view it "judicious to reopen the Harpers Ferry Monument
agitation" until after the election and so suspended further work
on the project.44

A year later, the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee reported
continued lack of progress. The committee was entering its sixth
year, and the granite boulder had been ready since the first year
but had no place to go, a situation that led one woman to term the
committee "The Wandering Jew Committee." That name was appropriate,
the committee observed in a thinly veiled reference to the
divisiveness of the 1924 election, "since we have that modern
Beelzebub driving us amain, as effectively as it has, all Hooded
and Shrouded, driven the Democratic party on the reefs." With
regard to the climate in Harpers Ferry, shortly before the 1925
convention at Hot Springs, Arkansas, committee members became aware
of certain conditions at Storer College which they believed shed
"considerable light" on why the memorial was opposed locally. Mary
Dowling Bond learned that the armory fire engine house, since the
raid commonly known as John Brown's Fort, was owned by Storer
College and used as a museum. Furthermore, college alumni had
placed a tablet on the building in 1918 to commemorate the heroism
of Brown and his men. More alarming, Bond heard of a woman who had
visited the fort museum only to be met with "such libelous canards"
as iron collars and handcuffs described as items slaves were forced
to wear.45 "To upset these traditions would remove a
sensational means of spreading false propaganda," Bond commented.
Noting many "bumptious" students attended Storer College, she
concluded they likely had joined railroad and town officials in
opposing any challenge to "the Brown traditions."46

Not for another six years did the UDC secure a place for the
memorial at Harpers Ferry. When Elizabeth Bashinsky became
president-general of the UDC in 1930, she committed the
organization to erecting the boulder at Harpers Ferry, "but not
until the inscription should be changed omitting every word of
bitterness, since we wished it to perpetuate loyalty & truth
rather than any word that might suggest any bitterness or reflect
upon the cruelty of others."47 In light of this new
spirit of compromise, Matthew Page Andrews now deleted the sentence
the town council had wanted revised in the early 1920s, inserted
the word "freeman" and a reference to Shepherd's employment with
the B&O, and made other minor revisions.48

These revisions, coupled with new town leadership, brought a
change of heart in Harpers Ferry. James Ranson, son of a
Confederate veteran, became town mayor in 1930. Correspondence
between Ranson and Bashinsky ensued, and in mid-1931 the town
council unanimously approved erection of the Faithful Slave
Memorial. Bashinsky had already met with a B&O representative
regarding the boulder's possible placement on railroad property,
but as July approached, she had not yet received the necessary
permission from the B&O.49 Consequently, Matthew
Page Andrews and Ranson looked for an appropriate location in
Harpers Ferry. At Ranson's suggestion, a local druggist gave the
UDC permission to place the boulder on his property located across
Potomac Street from the John Brown Fort obelisk and not far from
the spot where Heyward Shepherd was shot.50

With a site in Harpers Ferry finally secured, the UDC and the
SCV dedicated the Faithful Slave Memorial on the afternoon of
October 10, 1931. Participants and guests included a relative of
John Brown captive Colonel Lewis Washington; UDC president-general
Elizabeth Bashinsky; memorial committee chairwoman Mary Dowling
Bond; Colonel Braxton Gibson and Matthew Page Andrews, representing
the SCV; the Storer College Singers; local committee chairman James
Ranson and his father B. B. Ranson, a Confederate veteran who was a
member of a militia company present at Brown's execution in 1859;
Heyward Shepherd relative James Walker; James Moten, a black man
holding the same job Shepherd once held at the train station; and
Storer College president Henry McDonald, who despite his early
opposition had introduced the resolution at the town council
meeting in 1931 in favor of the memorial and now was a speaker at a
gathering he believed would "voice the spirit of fellowship and
enduring good will."51

The ceremony included an invocation, welcoming address,
greetings, introduction of speakers, two principal addresses, and
benediction. Of the shorter remarks, only the text of the welcoming
address by Henry McDonald is available. McDonald characterized the
event not as a day to "remember discord and a past, however
memorable and glorious," but as a day to look into the future with
"the spirit of peace" inspired by the memorial. He emphasized the
memorial's tribute to "fidelity to duty, faithfulness in times of
stress, vigorous defense of honor, . . . [and] high resolution to
do the right, as one is given to see the right." McDonald expressed
the hope that black men and women would see whites were willing to
share their advantages with all races who were
faithful.52

The two principal speeches given by Matthew Page Andrews and
Elizabeth Bashinsky set a somewhat different tone. Although
entitled "Heyward Shepherd: Victim of Violence," Andrews's
historical address included little on the man Heyward Shepherd.
Andrews indicated that information on Shepherd was limited although
"distinctly creditable." But if Andrews had little to report on
Shepherd, he had much to say about John Brown and slavery. Andrews
challenged the "monstrous delusion" of a heroic Brown and portrayed
him as a crazed criminal attempting to overthrow the government.
Andrews further denounced Brown's goal of abolitionism, the
immediate end of slavery, and argued that changes in the economy
would have brought emancipation, a gradual freeing of the slaves.
In a clear attempt to show this opinion crossed racial and
geographic lines, Andrews informed his listeners that Abraham
Lincoln was an emancipationist rather than an abolitionist and
noted that free blacks in Baltimore had condemned inflammatory
abolitionist appeals in the wake of Brown's raid. Andrews also
contended that blacks had benefitted from "the period of their
indenture" or "racial apprenticeship."53

In her address, Elizabeth Bashinsky fondly recalled relations
between blacks and Southern whites during slavery and argued that
slaves in the United States, unlike those in Haiti, had not
violently risen against their masters because they were well
clothed, fed, and housed, treated kindly, and taught Christianity.
She voiced pride and joy in the advancement of blacks and the
achievements of institutions such as Tuskegee and Hampton, but she
acknowledged that "in a more intimate sense and closer to our
hearts remains the old negro 'Mammy,' who with her humility and
sweet decorum has become the real institution." While affirming
allegiance to the national flag, she also spoke of devotion to the
Confederate flag, comparing that sentiment to the oft unspoken but
nonetheless unceasing love of a mother for her dead child.
Returning to the occasion at hand, Elizabeth Bashinsky summed up
its purpose-to commemorate in stone "the loyalty, courage, and
self-sacrifice of Heyward Shepherd and thousands of others of his
race who would, like him, have suffered death rather than betray
their masters or to be false to a trust."54 One area
newspaper reported Bashinsky "was loudly applauded, for every word
that she uttered could be distinctly heard and was heartily
approved."55

Shortly after Bashinsky concluded her remarks, the Storer
College Singers rose to provide music. Pearl Tatten, music director
at the college, apparently incensed at the tone of the event which
differed from the "celebration of interracial good-will" she had
expected, took occasion to respond.56 She informed the
crowd she was the daughter of a Union soldier who fought against
the enslavement of his people. Blacks were not looking backward but
"pushing forward to a larger freedom, not in the spirit of the
black mammy but in the spirit of new freedom and rising
youth."57

Tatten's remarks neither began nor ended reaction to the
Faithful Slave or Heyward Shepherd Memorial, as it now became
commonly known. Before the dedication of the memorial, Henry
McDonald received inquiries from the Afro-American, a black
newspaper published in Baltimore, and from the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) seeking verification
of his participation in its unveiling. The former simply sent a
telegram asking for confirmation that McDonald would make an
address at the dedication of an "UNCLE TOM, ANTI JOHN BROWN
MONUMENT."58 NAACP executive secretary Walter White
questioned the involvement of the president of a black school in
the dedication of a memorial White understood honored "all true
slaves who remained faithful during the raid," vilified John Brown
as a criminal, and promoted the idea that blacks did not
participate in the struggle for their own freedom.59

After its dedication, the black press strongly condemned the
Heyward Shepherd Memorial. The Pittsburgh Courier ran an
editorial by columnist Max Barber, president of the John Brown
Memorial Association, denouncing the entire idea of erecting a
memorial to Shepherd, who "didn't do a single thing to merit a
monument," who fled when ordered to stop by Brown's men, who "could
not have worshipped slavery," and who probably did not know Brown's
purpose. Barber challenged the comments made on Brown and slave
attitudes and accused the South of "still hanker[ing] for the
filthy institution of slavery."60 The
Afro-American praised Pearl Tatten for her comments but
denounced McDonald and the Reverend George Bragg, a black minister
from Baltimore, for their participation. In its October 17 issue,
the newspaper carried an article refuting attempts to characterize
Brown as a criminal. The same issue reported speeches at the
dedication were met with laughter from B&O railroad porters on
a train near the platform and noted dissatisfaction with the
ceremony among Storer College students.61

Some blacks took an opposing position. Among them was James
Walker, Shepherd's relative, who occupied a seat on the platform
during the ceremony and later wrote an open letter to Pearl Tatten
expressing his displeasure with her remarks. According to Walker,
the event attempted to bridge sectionalism by having the
descendants of those who fought for North and South come together
in tribute to a loyal and trustworthy man. Accusing Tatten of
giving way to prejudice, Walker claimed her "untimely blow-out
might have wrecked the car of racial progress."62 The
Reverend Bragg believed the memorial and ceremony an attempt to
effect good interracial relations and characterized Andrews's
address as "simply magnificent."63 Furthermore, a member
of the Charles Town UDC chapter reported that "leading colored men"
found Andrews's address "so instructive" that they requested it be
printed and sold in pamphlet form.64

Still, the furor over the memorial continued for months, with
Henry McDonald as a particular target. Emphasizing the condition of
blacks in the South-especially disfranchisement, segregation, and
lynchings-Storer College graduate Charles Hill called McDonald's
participation "a colossal blunder."65 In a letter to the
Afro-American, Hill charged that by participating in the
dedication of a monument that was "a symbol of that inferiority
complex which the slaves could not evade," McDonald was "creating
an attitude of servility in the students' minds."66 In
the Crisis, the NAACP magazine, editor W. E. B. Du Bois
called the dedication a "pro-slavery celebration" and termed the
participation of McDonald and Bragg "disgraceful."67
Even Max Barber, who knew McDonald as a fellow member of the John
Brown Memorial Association, must have been "shocked and disgusted"
at the statements made during the ceremony and concluded McDonald
erred in participating in an event concocted by "a bunch of
unregenerate rebels."68

The NAACP decided to take action to counter the impression
created by the memorial. In March 1932 a local member wrote
McDonald requesting permission for the NAACP to hold a meeting on
the Storer College campus to honor John Brown. McDonald replied
favorably but requested a place on the program "because some have
misunderstood my attitude in respect to the Heyward Shepherd
Memorial."69 That same month, Walter White wrote
McDonald to ask if the NAACP might place a tablet on John Brown's
Fort. Again McDonald replied favorably, although he requested
further information on the tablet's inscription. Nearly a month
later, White forwarded a copy of the inscription in which its
author W. E. B. Du Bois characterized Brown's raid as a blow
against slavery that "woke a guilty nation," noted that several of
Brown's raiders were black, and stated two hundred thousand black
soldiers and four million freed blacks had marched over Brown's
"crucified corpse."70

McDonald opposed its "ill-advised and historically inaccurate"
language. He solicited the opinion of college trustees but in so
doing reminded them of the college's long history of promoting
interracial goodwill and cautioned that "the result of placing a
tablet with such an inscription upon the historic fort . . . would
be an unhappy thing."71 In general, those trustees who
replied to McDonald's inquiry agreed with his assessment. McDonald
informed White the proposed inscription would not do and enclosed
the suggestion of trustee Thomas Robertson for the simple
statement, "JOHN BROWN 1800-1859 'HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING
ON'."72 While expressing understanding for McDonald's
and the trustees' point of view, White replied Robertson's
suggestion did not meet NAACP goals. Because "a nationally
publicized tablet giving the Confederate point of view" now stood
in Harpers Ferry and because "a new copperheadism" was growing
among historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the NAACP
wished to make a permanent statement of the black point of view.
White asked McDonald if the NAACP could proceed with its meeting at
Harpers Ferry and display the tablet whether or not the college
allowed it to remain permanently.73 McDonald approved
that request.74

On May 21, 1932, several hundred delegates to the annual NAACP
conference in Washington journeyed to Harpers Ferry for the
dedication of the tablet honoring John Brown. After receiving a
welcome from Henry McDonald, the audience heard Oswald Garrison
Villard and Max Barber pay tribute to Brown. Then followed the
remarks of W. E. B. Du Bois, from whom many delegates first learned
the Storer College president and trustees had refused to allow the
tablet on the fort. Du Bois read the NAACP's official statement
explaining the organization's inability to reach agreement with
Storer College and informing delegates the tablet would be taken to
New York until such time as it might be accepted at Harpers Ferry.
But first, with "biting sarcasm and . . . effective invective," he
defended the inscription and suggested the UDC had influenced the
college's decision. Understanding Du Bois's remarks as "a solemn
declaration of war" on Henry McDonald, delegates responded with
"thunderous applause." A number of delegates were so upset with the
college they refused to eat the dinner provided for them and left
immediately at the close of the meeting.75 One such
delegate acknowledged that the inscription reflected Du Bois's
"very extreme views" and believed a simpler statement would have
been preferable, but even so, he was insulted by the college's
action and therefore "instinctively" supported the Du Bois side by
refusing to eat at Storer College.76

Scathing attacks on Henry McDonald and Storer College followed
the NAACP tablet episode. The Washington Tribune accused the
"white Judases" of Storer College who refused to allow the NAACP
tablet of permitting the UDC and SCV to erect the memorial to
Heyward Shepherd. "Their attitude condemns them of attempting to
defend the institution of slavery, of justifying present day
injustice, of feeding to black youth a vicious opiate of
subservience and `Uncle Tomism' under the false title of
`education'," the editorial declared. With such leadership, the
Tribune concluded, Storer College was "a failure" and "a
detriment to Negro freedom and manhood," and it urged students to
blacklist the college.77 Equally as contemptuous of
McDonald in its commentary, the Afro-American described him
as the kind of white leader who was more dangerous than racist
demagogues, "the Bleases, Tillmans or Heflins,"78 and
declared unequivocally that no "white man under the spell of the
Daughters of the Confederacy can teach black boys and girls to be
free." In discussing the reaction of those in attendance at the
NAACP ceremony at Storer College, the newspaper stated that "it was
written in every facial expression that Dr. McDonald, apologist for
those Southern whites, who would desecrate John Brown's memory
while glorifying the slave regime, must go."79 Black
historian Carter Woodson concurred and urged blacks to join
together to force McDonald out.80

McDonald did not go for another dozen years, and it is not clear
what role, if any, the Heyward Shepherd Memorial/NAACP tablet
debacle played in his forced retirement in 1944. The public furor
seems to have subsided after the initial outburst against McDonald
during the summer of 1932; and while he sensed that strong feelings
still existed beneath the surface, McDonald indicated the
controversy, "for the major part, [was] a past issue" by September
of that year.81 Besides, McDonald's ouster in 1944
certainly involved other issues. His age-he would turn seventy-two
in 1944-was a factor, and the college board of trustees had already
considered the advisability of engaging an assistant/understudy for
the president. Storer College also faced serious challenges to its
long-term survival in the form of inadequate financial resources
and declining enrollment.82 Nevertheless, McDonald
pointed to the determination of some blacks to wrest control of
Storer College from its white leadership as the primary motivation
of those seeking his removal. This push was not restricted to
Storer College, of course, as blacks had been fighting for control
of heretofore white-run black schools for several decades. Yet the
fact that Carter Woodson's call for McDonald's ouster in 1932 was
squarely placed within the context of blacks taking charge of such
schools raises the possibility that McDonald's participation in the
dedication of the Heyward Shepherd Memorial and his subsequent
refusal to allow the Du Bois tablet on John Brown's Fort could have
precipitated such a campaign at Storer College.83 Even
so, it apparently was not until several like-minded people became
members of the college board of trustees around 1940 that a
"whispering campaign" for black leadership at Storer began among
those individuals who actually had the power to replace
McDonald.84

Storer College got its first black president in 1944 but closed
its doors little more than a decade later. The NAACP tablet
honoring John Brown never returned to Harpers Ferry. The Heyward
Shepherd Memorial remains, however. In recent years, it has been a
renewed subject of controversy between those who claim the memorial
is an appropriate tribute to Shepherd and loyal blacks and those
who claim it is a misrepresentation of history and black attitudes
toward slavery.85 The Heyward Shepherd Memorial recalls
events that shook this country in the last century; ultimately, the
struggle over its creation and how to remember John Brown and
blacks of Shepherd's day reveals much more about the failure of
this country in the post-Civil War years to come to grips with the
racial oppression that in part had caused the war in the first
place. Blacks have made considerable progress in recent decades,
but as the continuing debate over the Heyward Shepherd Memorial
suggests, they have yet to realize fully the hopes inspired by John
Brown's raid, wartime emancipation, and Reconstruction. As it did
when the memorial was erected more than six decades ago, it is this
unfulfilled promise that casts the longest shadow over the Heyward
Shepherd Memorial.

3. Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A
Biography of John Brown , 2d ed. (Amherst: Univ. of
Massachusetts Press, 1984), ix-x.

4. Ibid., vii. Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On:
Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid
(Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1995) explores the
reaction to Brown immediately after the raid. For black attitudes
from the 1850s into the 1960s see Benjamin Quarles, Allies for
Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1974). The Confederate Veteran , which regularly carried
anti-Brown comments from its creation in 1893 to its demise in
1932, shows the attitudes of Lost Cause Southern whites.

7. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood , 275, 278,
290-92, 295-96, 300-01. In addition to Oates's biography, two
important studies of Brown are Oswald Garrison Villard, John
Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910) and Richard O. Boyer, The Legend of
John Brown: A Biography and History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1973). The latter addresses Brown's life only up to the mid-1850s
but includes a chronological list of many other studies of Brown.
John Brown's Raid (Washington, DC: National Park Service,
U.S. Department of the Interior, 1973) details the events at
Harpers Ferry in readable fashion for the general public.

8. Joseph Barry, The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry
(1903; reprint, Shepherdstown: Shepherdstown Register, Inc., 1979),
84; Census of the Population, Eighth Census of the United States,
1860 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M653), Frederick
County, Virginia, 431, hereafter referred to as 1860 Census;
Frederick County, Virginia, Deed Book 10: 118, 397; "Testimony of
John D. Starry," Select Committee of the Senate Appointed to
Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property
at Harper's Ferry, Report No. 278, Senate, 36th Cong., 1st Sess.
[1859-60], 24, hereafter referred to as Mason Report. Shepherd's
widow Sarah appears on the 1860 census with five children aged four
to sixteen. References for Shepherd's ownership of land in
Winchester were provided by Ben Ritter, Winchester historian.
According to Ritter, Shepherd obtained deeds to land in 1854 and
1858. Documentation of Shepherd's earlier life has not been found.
He does not appear on the Frederick County census for 1850 and is
not listed as a head of household in available statewide indices.
It is unclear whether Shepherd was born a free man or was an
emancipated slave because various anecdotal references present
different opinions on that subject.

9. "Testimony of Lewis W. Washington," Mason Report, 39; and
Virginia Free Press , 4 December 1889. 10. Barry, Strange
Story of Harper's Ferry , 50; and "Testimony of John D.
Starry," Mason Report, 23-24. Fifty years after the raid, Patrick
Higgins, relief bridge watchman, remembered waking Shepherd at the
train station after he (Higgins) was shot by Brown's men. Higgins
claimed that only after he and the express train conductor had
another encounter with the men on the bridge did Shepherd walk into
the line of fire. J. Hampton Baumgartner, "Fifty Years after John
Brown," Book of the Royal Blue 13 (December 1909): 3. A
different version was given by one train passenger who wrote that,
having been alerted to an encounter between the bridge watchman and
two strangers, the express train conductor, baggage master, two
train passengers, and "a large Black Man [Shepherd] that handles
the bags on the Winchester Road" all went to the bridge to
investigate. S. F. Seely to Ada, 17 October 1859, Simeon Franklin
Seely Collection, West Virginia and Regional History Collection,
West Virginia University Libraries, West Virginia University,
Morgantown, WV.

14. Virginia Free Press , 23 May 1867, 29 November 1879,
and 13 November 1884. According to the October 20, 1859, account of
the raid, William Gallaher was a member of the Jefferson Guards,
one of several local militia groups that had converged on Harpers
Ferry in response to news of the raid.

15. Ibid., 18 June 1881.

16. Ibid., 16 October 1884.

17. Ibid., 24 and 31 July 1902. While Gallaher mentions
Shepherd only in the July 31 issue and does not specifically state
therein how Shepherd would not have obtruded himself, Gallaher's
meaning is clear from his comments in the earlier issue. He derided
fancily dressed black men who, "inflated with so much self
importance," behaved without regard for the comfort and
sensibilities of their fellow travelers, perhaps most importantly
(because Gallaher mentions it twice) by sitting next to white
women. Such men made Jim Crow railroad cars necessary; Gallaher
states a week later, if all blacks behaved like Heyward Shepherd
and other respectable blacks, separate accommodations would not be
necessary at all.

18. Ibid., 15 August 1894. According to Benjamin Quarles,
the committee headed by Frederick Douglass formed in the 1880s to
raise ten to twelve thousand dollars for a "granite shaft" to mark
the engine house site. Given the leadership of the 1880s group as
identified by Quarles and of the 1894 group as named by the New
York Press , the groups evidently were one and the same.
Quarles, Allies for Freedom , 189; and New York Press
excerpted in Virginia Free Press , 8 August 1894.

20. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy , 156-57; and
Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the
Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1980),
105. For some monuments and memorials erected by the UDC before the
mid-1950s, see Mary B. Poppenheim, et al., The History of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1894-1955 (Raleigh, NC:
Edwards & Broughton Co., 1956), 49-92, 276-314.

25. "Recent Reviews of Histories," Confederate Veteran
40(June 1932): 236. Among his activities, Andrews served with the
SCV's Gray Book Committee, which was created to prepare a book
stating the Southern view on such topics as slavery; prepared a
history for the UDC's Children of the Confederacy program, compiled
their Women of the South in War Times , and regularly
addressed UDC chapter meetings; worked with the American Legion
regarding history in seventh and eighth grades; and represented the
Southern viewpoint in a Yale University film project on American
history. "Historical Department, U.D.C.," ibid . 25(January
1917): 40; "Gray Book Committee," ibid . 25(March 1917):
130; "National Citizens' Creed Contest," ibid . 25(June
1917): 288; "The Convention at Hot Springs," ibid .
33(December 1925): 471; "Yale University Films," ibid .
34(August 1926): 310; and "Survey of Confederate Pensions,"
ibid . 39(November 1931): 436.

26. "The Convention in Asheville," ibid . 38(December
1930): 479.

27. Boyd B. Stutler to Dr. Henry T. McDonald, 4 October 1931,
McDonald/Stutler Collection Binder, vol. 1, HFNHP. To state the
obvious, "the John Brownism of the period" that Stutler recalled
Andrews mentioning as a reason for the memorial could refer to
positive portrayals of John Brown. After all, UDC president-general
May McKinney mentioned English playwright John Drinkwater's 1918
play Abraham Lincoln, with its "frequent" use of the song "John
Brown's Body" and the phrase "his truth goes marching on," when she
recommended the UDC act with the SCV to erect a memorial to Heyward
Shepherd. Minutes of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Convention of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy, Asheville, North Carolina,
November 9-13, 1920, 38-40. To speculate about a larger meaning, it
is interesting that immediately following the end of World War I,
many Americans became increasingly afraid of radicalism among
anarchists, socialists, and labor organizers to name a few. Whites
were also alarmed by the growing assertiveness of blacks, calls in
black newspapers for blacks to fight for racial justice, and
reports that blacks were arming themselves for rebellion, a fear
that likely conjured up images of John Brown and the revolution he
had planned for the slave South. The year 1919 was particularly
tense, and race riots erupted in numerous communities in the South
and Midwest. Robert H. Brisbane, The Black Vanguard: Origins of
the Negro Social Revolution 1900-1960 (Valley Forge, PA: Judson
Press, 1970), 71, 74-76; and Steven A. Reich, "Soldiers of
Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship, 1917-1921,"
Journal of American History 82(March 1996): 1478-80,
1483-84, 1490, 1498-1500.

30. Poppenheim, History of the UDC , 77; "Report of the
Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes of the Twenty-Eighth
Annual Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, St.
Louis, Missouri, November 8-12, 1921, 208; and Minutes of the
Thirty-Second Annual Convention of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, Hot Springs, Arkansas, November 17-21, 1925, 225.

33. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Convention, 209; "Report of the
Division Historian," Minutes of the Twenty-Third Annual Convention
of the West Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, Keyser, West Virginia, September 7-8, 1921, 28.

34. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirtieth Annual Convention of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, Washington, D.C., November 20-24, 1923, 217; "Report,"
Minutes of the Thirty-Second Annual Convention, 226; and "Report,"
Minutes of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Convention, 208.

35. The physical appearance of downtown Harpers Ferry has
changed considerably since the 1920s. Based on the town's
appearance at the time, the two descriptions suggest a small piece
of land on top of the railroad embankment formed into a triangle by
the intersection of Potomac and Shenandoah streets and the drive up
the embankment to the station, then located at the east end of
Shenandoah Street.

36. President [Henry T. McDonald] to Rev. J. J. Turner, 1 June
1932, Reel 123, Flash 9; and President of Storer College Alumni
Association to Associated Negro Press, 30 May 1932, Reel 115, Flash
10, HFNHP. McDonald, a native of Blue Earth, Minnesota, and a
graduate of Hillsdale College in Michigan, became president in 1899
and remained in that position until 1944. The college closed its
doors in 1955 when the implementation of desegregation compounded
the college's enrollment and financial problems. Available sources
on the early history of Storer College, particularly its founding,
include Kate J. Anthony, Storer College Harper's Ferry, W.
Va. (Boston: Morning Star Publishing House, 1891); Mary Ellen
McClain, "Storer College Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (1865 to
1897)" (Honors thesis, Linfield College, 1974); Barbara Rasmussen,
"Sixty-four Edited Letters of the Founders of Storer College" (MA
thesis, West Virginia University, 1986); Anna Coxe Toogood, "The
Lockwood House: Birthplace of Storer College" (Furnishings Study,
Historic Data Section, National Park Service, 1969); and Mary
Johnson, "Package 119, Park Buildings 56 (Lockwood House), 57
(Brackett House), and 58 (Morrell House), Fillmore Street, Camp
Hill, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (1796 to 1962)"
(Historic Structures Report, History Section, National Park
Service/University of Maryland Cooperative Agreement, 6 December
1995). The history of Storer College in the twentieth century
remains virtually unexplored; only the last named report touches
upon any aspect of the college during those years. Information on
the armory fire engine house can be found in Charlotte J.
Fairbairn, "John Brown's Fort (Armory Engine and Guard House)
1848-1961" (Historic Structures Report, Harpers Ferry National
Monument, 15 August 1961). All reports located at HFNHP.

37. [McDonald] note on typescript of letter from Julian S. Carr
to Daniel Willard, 12 May 1922; and Willard to Henry McDonald, 27
June 1922, Storer College Binder 1910-1925.

38. Recorder to Willard, 2 June 1922, ibid.

39. Unsigned note [McDonald], 2 June 1922, "Copy of Proposed
Inscription," ibid. 40. "Report of the Faithful Slave
Memorial Committee," Minutes of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Convention
of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Birmingham, Alabama,
November 14-18, 1922, 217; "Report," Minutes of the Thirtieth
Annual Convention, 217; "Report," Minutes of the Thirty-Second
Annual Convention, 226; and Farmers Advocate, 6 January 1923. The
UDC incorrectly identified McDonald as a native of
Massachusetts.

42. Quoted in "Report of the Division Historian [Orra
Tomlinson]," Minutes of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Convention of the
West Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
Martinsburg, West Virginia, September 18-19, 1923, 20.

44. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirty-First Annual Convention of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy, Savannah, Georgia, November 18-22, 1924, 228; and
David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku
Klux Klan, 3d ed. (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1987), 9-10, 30,
201-15. The KKK's presence was felt in the Harpers Ferry area at
this time. In November 1922 a parent of one Storer College student
wrote that his son had left school because "the Ku Klux Klan
together with trouble at the college made him feel it wasn't safe
for him to stay there." Lee R. Taylor to McDonald, 16 November
1922, Reel 113, Flash 4, HFNHP. The following August, about forty
Klansmen and another forty or fifty men marched from downtown
Harpers Ferry to Bolivar Heights for a "conference." Farmers
Advocate , 1 September 1923.

45. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirty-Second Annual Convention, 225-27. Henry McDonald
wrote the inscription for the Storer College Alumni Tablet in 1917.
See Storer Record, December 1918, Reel 122, Flash 30; and President
to Rev. J. J. Turner, 1 June 1932, Reel 123, Flash 9, HFNHP.

46. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirty-Third Annual Convention of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, November 16-20, 1926, 210.

48. These changes were determined by comparing the inscription
on the memorial to that printed in "Report of the Faithful Slave
Memorial Committee," Minutes of the Thirtieth Annual Convention,
218-19.

49. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Convention of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy, Jacksonville, Florida, November 17-21, 1931, 299;
and "From the President General," Confederate Veteran 37(July
1931): 270.

50. "Report of the Faithful Slave Memorial Committee," Minutes
of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Convention, 299-300; "Annual Report of
President, West Virginia Division," Minutes of the Thirty-Third
Annual Convention of the West Virginia Division of the United
Daughters of the Confederacy, Bluefield, West Virginia, September
23-24, 1931, 17.

51. Afro-American, 17 October 1931, Martinsburg Journal, 12
October 1931, and Shepherdstown Register, 15 October 1931,
clippings in Heyward Shepherd Memorial Binder; Spirit of Jefferson,
30 September 1931, clipping, McDonald Collection; Matthew Page
Andrews, Heyward Shepherd: Victim of Violence (Heyward Shepherd
Memorial Association, n.d.), 6; "Report of the Faithful Slave
Memorial Committee," Minutes of the Thirty-Eighth Annual
Convention, 299; [McDonald] to Afro-American, 6 October 1931,
Heyward Shepherd Memorial Binder. Why McDonald changed his opinion
about the memorial is not clear. Perhaps he believed the
inscription was acceptable in its revised form, which was
considerably less harsh in its rhetoric about John Brown than the
one settled on in 1921. Or perhaps he saw the inevitability of the
event and hoped to moderate its tone through his participation.
Given the economic depression gripping the country and the
financial difficulties facing the college due both to that event
and to an ongoing decline in support from traditional philanthropic
sources, it is also possible that McDonald hoped participation
would benefit the college by creating interest in the college's
welfare by Southern whites.

52. [McDonald], "Remarks at the Unveiling of the Heyward
Shepherd Marker," 10 October 1931, McDonald Collection.

53. Andrews, Heyward Shepherd, 10-11, 15-17, 19, 25-27, 32. It
is interesting to note that Andrews informed Henry McDonald that
"all" his ancestors were connected to either the abolitionist or
emancipationist causes. Whether there were any abolitionists in
Andrews's family is not known, but several members of his father's
family supported American black colonization in Africa as an
emancipationary measure and freed some of their slaves for
transport to Liberia. Andrews's great-grandmother Ann Page of
Clarke County, Virginia, began sending willing slaves to Liberia in
1832, and her daughter Sarah and son-in-law Charles W. Andrews
continued this endeavor after her death in 1838. Despite the good
intentions of some colonizationists toward blacks, the colonization
movement arose from the almost universally held premise that blacks
could never live in a state of equality with whites and that it was
unacceptable and dangerous to perpetuate a degraded free black
population within the United States. Therefore, it is not
surprising that Andrews's family did not free all their slaves and
that census records as late as 1860 list five slaves under Charles
Andrews's name and fourteen slaves under the name of Ann Robinson,
Matthew Page Andrews's maternal grandmother. Matthew Page Andrews
contended that the "hysterical intemperance" of his abolitionist
relations in the North had hindered the efforts of his
emancipationist antecedents in the South. See Andrews to McDonald,
14 November 1931, Heyward Shepherd Memorial Binder; A. D. Kenamond,
Prominent Men of Shepherdstown During Its First 200 Years ([Charles
Town]: Jefferson County Historical Society, 1963), 20; Mary F.
Goodwin, ed., "A Liberian Packett," Virginia Magazine of History
and Biography 59(January 1951): 73; 1860 Census, Jefferson County,
Virginia, 871, 949; and 1860 Census, Jefferson County Slave
Schedule, 150B, 159. For information on the colonization movement
see P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865
(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961).

60. Pittsburgh Courier , 24 October 1931. See also
Chicago Defender 16 October 1931 and Pittsburgh
Courier , 17 October 1931, clippings in ibid. Organized
in 1924, the John Brown Memorial Association had several goals: to
conduct annual pilgrimages to Brown's grave in New York, to "rescue
John Brown's name and the names of his followers from the obloquy
and ignominy that American historians have heaped upon them," and
to erect a monument to Brown. The association erected a monument at
North Elba, New York, in 1935. John Brown Memorial Association
Brochure, Brackett, Newcomer, McDonald Papers Binder, vol. 2,
HFNHP; and Lake Placid News , 3 and 10 May 1935, clippings,
McDonald Collection.

61. See various clippings from Afro-American , 10, 17,
and 31 October 1931 in Heyward Shepherd Binder; and 17 October 1931
clipping, McDonald Collection.

63. Bragg to James M. Ranson, printed in Andrews, Heyward
Shepherd. Bragg also wrote of his concern for interracial relations
in a letter to McDonald, 22 October 1931, Heyward Shepherd Memorial
Binder.

64. "Report of the Charles Town Lawson Botts Chapter No. 261,"
Minutes of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Convention of the West Virginia
Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Charleston,
West Virginia, September 27-29, 1932, 83.

70. White to McDonald, 23 March 1932; President to White, 25
March 1932; and White to McDonald, 16 April 1932, Reel 123, Flash
9, HFNHP. The inscription White provided reads as follows: Here /
John Brown / Aimed at human slavery / A Blow / That woke a guilty
nation. / With him fought / Seven slaves and sons of slaves. / Over
his crucified corpse / Marched 200,000 black soldiers / And
4,000,000 freedmen / Singing / 'John Brown's body lies a mouldering
in the grave / But his Soul goes marching on!' / In Gratitude this
Tablet is Erected / The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People / May 21, 1932.

76. Pittsburgh Courier , 4 June 1932. The comment on Du
Bois's "very extreme views" reflects the fact that Du Bois was
increasingly out of step with mainstream black opinion by the
1930s. Du Bois, like growing numbers of blacks, saw accommodation
as a failed means to black advancement, and he was one of the most
outspoken proponents of militant protest. Few shared his interest
in Marxist tactics, however, and few agreed with him when he
resurrected an old idea of voluntary black segregation in a
separate black cooperative economy. Advocating that idea brought Du
Bois into conflict with several important members of the NAACP,
intensified long-standing differences between Du Bois and Walter
White, and culminated in Du Bois's resignation as Crisis editor in
1934. Elliott Rudwick, "W. E. B. Du Bois: Protagonist of the
Afro-American Protest" in Black Leaders of the Twentieth
Century, eds. John Hope Franklin and August Meier (Urbana:
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1982), 77, 81-82.

77. Washington Tribune , 27 May 1932, Reel 123, Flash 10,
HFNHP.

78. The reference is to Senators Cole Blease and Ben Tillman of
South Carolina and J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama, who not only
championed black disfranchisement and segregation but in general
fueled white hatred of blacks for political gain.

81. President to Channing B. King, 23 September 1932, ibid.
Trustee Harry Myers expressed a similar opinion when he advised
against publication of the college alumni resolutions approved in
June in support of McDonald and the trustees. Harry to McDonald, 20
October 1932, ibid.

85. Since the 1950s, the memorial site has been within the
boundaries of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The NAACP
continues to oppose its display, while Confederate groups support
the memorial. Washington Post , 10 July 1995, metro section;
Martinsburg Journal , 3 October 1995; and Charleston
Daily Mail , 28 November 1995.